


Understanding

by springsdandelion (writergirlie)



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 14:44:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2313275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirlie/pseuds/springsdandelion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss was angry at her mother for the longest time. But now she understands what she had endured.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Understanding

**Author's Note:**

> It's been quite a while since I wrote HG fic, but this one just came into my brain and begged to be written, so...here it is.

**Understanding**

 

She comes to me in the middle of the night, after Prim has fallen asleep, holding Buttercup close to her chest. He’s staring at me, glowing eyes blinking in the darkness. I look away but still feel his stare, and soon I feel something else.

 

Her touch. It’s been so long since I’ve let her touch me like this. I’d almost forgotten how it felt. Her fingertips brush across my forehead, moving the hair away and tucking it behind my ear. The bed squeaks a little as she sits on the edge, and she’s careful not to apply too much pressure with her hand. I know she’s waiting for me to shrug it off.

 

For the first time, I don’t want to.

 

“It won’t always be this hard,” she says.

 

The words ring hollow in my ears, make my throat burn. They sound vaguely familiar, but my brain is too tired, too numb to search its depths for where I first heard them. Instead, I just turn my head and bury my face into the pillow, half-tempted to stifle the breath struggling to come out of me. It would be so easy to do that. She lifts my hand, pries my fingers free from the grip they’ve got on the rough material of the pillow case.

 

“You told me that once. I just didn’t believe you then.”

 

I don’t turn to face her. I don’t even want to open my eyes. I remember now. I remember saying this to her. How angry I was, how desperate I was to pull her back to us. How abandoned I felt that she could choose to wallow in her grief while her children starved and begged for her not to slip away.

 

Tears soak into my pillow. My shoulders begin to shake, but I use up every ounce of energy I’ve got to stop the motion. I don’t want her to see me crying.

 

Her hand curves over my shoulder, thumb sweeping back and forth in that comforting motion I haven’t felt since I was a little girl. Then she bends down to kiss my head, her lips lingering on my crown for a few seconds before she presses her cheek to my matted hair.

 

“You were right,” she whispers. “I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but…you’ll find a way out of it.”

 

No. I won’t. I don’t know how. I can barely get through a day without sedatives. Can’t bear to be around others, when it’s so much easier to seek refuge in the suffocating confines of supply closets. But even then, I can’t get away from the noise in my head. That voice that haunts me.

 

That voice that I know is being snuffed out as we speak.

 

When he’s dead—when I know it for myself, get the indisputable confirmation—maybe I’ll find peace. But who am I kidding. My mother never found her own peace. She’s just learned to numb herself to the pain.

 

And that’s what she wants me to do now. Numb myself to this pain. Try to forget the anguish that fills my veins when I imagine a world without Peeta Mellark.

 

“That’s it…get it out…”

 

I don’t even realize that I’m sobbing. There’s no sound coming out of my mouth—only a flood of tears, and a trembling I can’t control. Her arms envelope me, wrapping around to contain me. And I let her.

 

“I’m sorry,” I say.

 

“What for?”

 

“For not understanding. For not knowing how it must have felt. For…hating you for feeling this.”

 

Her arms grab on even more tightly, and once again, I feel her lips on the crown of my head.

 

“I’d give anything for you not to feel it,” she says. And I know she means it.

 

But it’s too late. It’s already too late.


End file.
